


Monster Puberty 101, with Dr. St. Phibes

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Consent Issues, F/M, Monsters, Sex Pollen, don't worry everyone is consenting but you know how sex pollen is, jackalope, oh no another pairing I ship like fucking fedex, or y'know monster pheromones that are effectively sex pollen, shut up I really like this trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 18:09:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Donna requires a helping hand with an urgent task on the Ark-3. Jonah has no idea what he's about to get into, because informed consent is not a thing he ever gets to give where the experiment is concerned. Jackalopes aren't that dangerous... right?





	Monster Puberty 101, with Dr. St. Phibes

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as a series of 15 minute sprints for [15MinuteFics on Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/community/15MinuteFics). I did all 14 prompts so far basically in reverse sequence and ended up with a very respectable word count for 3.5 hours' work.
> 
> I just can't stand how goddamn cute Donna is. We all knew I was going to write this pairing eventually. I just wasn't expecting to kick off my ship career in this fashion.

"Would you like to play the most dangerous game?" Donna asked with a smile that was just a little too predatory for Jonah's comfort.

"Uh... are you asking to _hunt_ me? Cause I'm, uh, I didn't take you for the, uh... homicidal type." She'd requested his presence on the Ark-3 for what she'd described as an "urgent task" without any elaboration, and this was not what Jonah was expecting, to say the least.

"What? _Oh_! No, no no no, of course not, how silly. No. You and I are going to capture a hormone-addled pubescent jackalope that's escaped from the desert habitat into the Danish habitat."

"Oh. Where is _that_ considered the most dangerous game?"

"Right here, right now, on the Ark-3," she said, and pushed a net gun into his hands. "Jackalope pheromones are... let's call them potent. So any monster that passes its tracks is bound to be, er, agitated. I don't know how many of those will be between us and Rosebud."

"Your jackalope is named Rosebud," Jonah repeated skeptically.

"Well, _this_ jackalope is named Rosebud. And she's not going to be easy to capture. She's left a good few puncture wounds in me with her antlers before, and she's all riled up now." Donna shouldered a tranq dart rifle and offered Jonah a smile. "Oh, and, uh, her pheromones might make you a little... silly. Come on, she's this way."

"Silly," Jonah muttered to himself, "silly is _not_ the word she was about to use." He picked up the net gun, took a deep breath, and followed Donna into the Danish habitat.

***

The streets of the Danish habitat were quiet as Donna lead Jonah in the direction she thought the jackalope had gone. She was a fast walker, to the point where Jonah's long legs were the ones having difficulty keeping up. 

"Where is everything?" he asked in a hushed voice. Donna cast a glance back at him and pointed into the empty buildings lining the streets. 

"Smaller monsters in this habitat are primarily urban dwellers," she said. "Several of them are under my care because they've been wiped out since the rise of home pest control."

"So you're conserving... rats and bugs?"

"Oh, no, the giant rats live in the woods, not in the buildings. Well, not rats, technically they're rodents of unusual size—"

"I'm sorry, I can't go along with this," Jonah said, stopping still in the middle of the street. "I can't let you blatantly lump the Princess Bride in with B-movies. It hurts my soul."

"Well, you can be upset about it if you like, but there's no conservationist for monsters from excellent movies, and when I heard the ROUSes had come onto the endangered list I had to do something." She came back to him and tugged the sleeve of his jumpsuit urgently. "Come on, we have to find Rosebud before she—"

A low, uncanny sound like the whipping of the wind rose, but the air was still around them. It climbed in volume and pitch until it was a howl, sustained for a minute, and then faded out.

"—does that," Donna finished. "Before she does exactly that. _Damn._ We have to hurry."

***

"Something isn't right," Jonah breathed, looking down at his hands shaking around the net gun he held. He felt flushed and feverish and... oversensitive. Donna pulled back from looking around the corner of the building between them and the simulated seashore and gave him a very mediocre attempt at a smile from an equally flushed face.

"Oh, don't worry, it's just the jackalope pheromones," she said. 

"I don't feel silly," Jonah said. "I knew silly wasn't the right word. I feel... strange."

"Strange is a good word for it."

"I don't think I like it."

"Well, no, being swept up in a monster's puberty isn't meant to be an enjoyable experience," Donna said. "Or, really, an experience we should be having at all. It's, haha, it's probably a terrible idea, I'm sorry to have got you involved in it!" The laugh sounded a little hysterical, which was a word Jonah tried to avoid using due to implications, but which applied too perfectly here to be passed up.

"Is this going to kill us?"

"Heavens no! But I can't promise we might not wish we were dead."

"Dr. St. Phibes!" Jonah's jaw dropped, and she let out another uncomfortable and anxious giggle.

"I'm joking! I think I'm joking. Oh, I hope I'm joking. I am sorry, Jonah. I did warn you that it's the most dangerous game."

"You didn't adequately prepare me for this," he said. "You could have warned me a _little_ more comprehensively."

"I'll have you sign the consent forms when we're done," Donna said, and Jonah wondered exactly where she and Kinga knew each other from with their creative takes on his willing participation in things.

***

"I probably would have said yes if you'd warned me," Jonah said, and Donna arched her brows skeptically.

"Yes, that's exactly the type of man you are," she said with heavy sarcasm.

"The type who says yes when he's asked for help? Yeah, that's what got me into this mess in the first place," he said, and he lowered the net gun in one hand, coming closer to her. She watched him approach without moving until he was right next to her, only lowering her tranq dart rifle when he was already inside its reach. "What's it going to do to me?"

"The creature's going through puberty... make an educated guess," Donna said in what was probably the world's worst attempt to flirt, and Jonah furrowed his brow at her.

"Both mean and indirect. Well, it's making _you_ aggressive..."

"I don't know what effect it will have on you," she admitted. "I've only ever interacted with female jackalopes in this condition with other women, I've never seen its effects on male humans. I can tell you what the pheromones do to male jackalopes..."

"Please."

"It makes them... well... silly! Awkward and clumsy and affectionate."

"That's the viable mating strategy for these things? Dumb and cuddly is what turns lady jackalopes on?"

"That's the thing," Donna said. "The female jackalopes get very aggressive."

"So far, this tracks."

"Being pliable helps the males weather her violent proclivities until the heat is over."

"Which takes how long?"

"Well... until she's been fertilized."

"Wait," Jonah said. "We're catching a horny rabbit with antlers that's made you bleed multiple times in the past in order to _get it knocked up_?"

"I don't know what you think a _conservationist_ does, but breeding monsters is part of my job!"

"Let's just... get this over with," Jonah said. He was sweating despite the brisk temperature of the Danish habitat, and it was very hard for him to ignore the fact that he wanted to lay his head in Donna's lap and have her play with his hair. "The faster we do this, the faster I can go back to being my baseline level of awkward and clumsy and affectionate."

***

Donna looked up at Jonah with a strained but genuine smile and nudged her elbow against his side gently. “It shouldn’t get much worse than this,” she said. “Rosebud is at the edge of the water. If we can herd her into it, the effect of her pheromones should be considerably dampened.”

“Dampened,” Jonah repeated with a groan. Donna pushed her glasses up her nose and shrugged.

“Oh, as if you’re the only one who gets to make terrible puns as part of their job?” 

That eerie wind-like howl rose again. Jonah felt like he should be blown against the side of the building they were standing behind with the sound of a gale so clear in his ears, but the air was totally still. He got a better grip on his net gun and waited for their chance.

“Now!” Donna yelped, and shoved him out from behind the building. Jonah sprinted toward the jackalope, which was… a bunny. A bunny with antlers. A small, cute, fuzzy bunny with brown fur and _oh my god what the fuck are those teeth?_ The jackalope saw him and started running _at_ him, and the only thing that kept Jonah running straight was the fact that he could hear Donna’s footsteps pounding right behind his and he couldn't let her be endangered due to his cowardice. “ _Now_!” she repeated, and Jonah sent up a little prayer to the god of fine motor skill depreciation due to lack of video games available in space and shot the net at the jackalope.

The creature let out a furious shriek as it became tangled in the net antlers-first, and it fell into a kicking heap when it couldn’t free itself.

“Someone’s having a temper tantrum,” Donna said, and she stepped up next to Jonah and nudged him again. “Nice shot, Jonah!” She fired her tranq dart gun and the jackalope squealed and then went limp. Both humans cautiously approached the encumbered monster, and then Donna bent to pick it up by the scruff of the neck. “One moment,” she said, walked over to the water lapping at the fake seashore, and dunked the jackalope under the waves briefly.

Her compliment had gone right to Jonah’s head; he felt a little less dizzy once the jackalope got submerged, but no less eager to make Donna happy. When she came back to him, it was with a dripping monster in her arms and her lab coat and clothes sopping wet.

“Want me to take her?” Jonah offered, and Donna looked up at him with a calculating expression.

“No, I’ll keep hold of her. I couldn’t bear for her to hurt you more.”

“I’m not hurt now,” Jonah said. Well, not for a traditional value of hurt, anyways.

***

Donna walked a little more slowly with her damp and unconscious burden, and Jonah slowed to keep pace with her until he realized that she was _sniffing_ the jackalope and giving him glances he had no real idea how to interpret. That… probably wasn’t a good sign, right? Jonah tried to ignore his reaction to those wide eyes watching him. He felt less clumsy, his hands weren’t shaking any more, but all of his skin felt strange and tingly and her gaze nearly had the weight of a touch.

“Could you get the door, please,” was the first thing Donna said to Jonah since they left the seashore to walk back through the urban habitat. He was quick to unlock it and just as quick to lock it behind them once they were through it.

“So… now what?” he asked, leaning his net gun and her tranq dart rifle against the wall beside the door. Donna hugged the jackalope closer to her chest and he felt a stab of envy for the stupid monster.

“Now we put this bad girl back where she belongs,” Donna said, and started untangling the net from the jackalope’s antlers as they walked through the Ark-3 to the place where it had escaped from: the sandy, hot desert habitat. Jonah started sweating again as soon as they went into it, jumpsuit not designed for extreme heat, and Donna’s wild ringlets seemed to go a little limp as they walked a ways into the habitat. She knelt down to finish getting the net off the monster and petted its brown fur absently while she did it.

“So, uh…” The heat had dried the jackalope’s fur nearly instantly. Jonah had a dizzying impulse to kneel behind Donna and wrap himself around her, and shook his head sharply. “Do we have to, like, wake it up and integrate it back into jackalope society, or can we drop it here and get the hell out before I do something really stupid?”

“Do you want to do something really stupid?” The smirk she aimed at him was predatory, and she held out a hand that he took to pull her to her feet, not expecting her to sway into him entirely purposefully when she rose. 

“I want to do a lot of things and I’m pretty sure none of them are a good idea until we get away from this monster,” Jonah admitted.

“Then by all means, let’s go to a place where some of them become good ideas,” Donna said with a grin.

***

“I am sorry,” Donna said as she lead him through the part of the Ark-3 where she lived. “I should have warned you better.”

“Yes, you should have,” Jonah said. He thought that leaving the jackalope behind would mean his head would clear, but that was before Donna took his hand and kept him off-balance in a more direct fashion. “You don’t happen to know how long the effects of this last, do you?”

“Oh, well, there’s two answers to that question,” Donna said. “If we don’t do anything and just let it run its course… maybe a day? At least, for the rest of this day.”

“What’s the other option?” 

“We encourage our bodies to metabolize the pheromones faster.” She dragged two fingertips across his palm when she said it, and Jonah shivered.

“And that entails…”

“Are you going to make me say it?”

“Yes. Absolutely I am. You’ve been indirect enough, don’t you think?”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Donna said, and she stopped just outside a door to look all the way up at him. “I believe you said something about your baseline level of awkward and clumsy and affectionate… I’d like to see where you’re at now and then compare it to the way you are later.”

“Donna, please…” Jonah wasn’t usually the begging type, but if she was determined to tease him… “Just tell me what you want from me.”

“I’d like it very much if you touched me and you let me touch you in a sensual way,” Donna said. “Preferably with orgasms involved. Well, if we’re doing this to get through the pheromones, the orgasms are required, not preferable. Otherwise we’re just— mm!” 

That was enough of an explanation for Jonah, who bent to catch her in a kiss. Her hand fumbled blindly against the wall behind her until she found the switch to the door, opened it, and pulled Jonah into a dark room with her fingers hooked in his jumpsuit collar.

***

“Where—” Jonah didn’t finish the question as soon as Donna flipped on a light. It was clearly her room, a desk piled with notebooks and loose papers against one wall, closet door hanging open, her bed pushed into a corner of the room and heaped with stuffed animal versions of movie monsters. She flushed and swept the toys off the bed.

“Excuse the state of it, I don’t— I don’t usually get visitors in here,” she said.

“I don’t care how your room looks,” Jonah said, and he sat on the edge of her bed when she gave him a gentle push. “I just care how you look. Or how you’re looking at me. Yes, like that.” Her heavy-lidded gaze swept down his body and back up, and she held out one hand.

“May I take your glasses?” Any other time, Jonah would have hesitated, hating to be stripped of his clear vision, but he slid them off, folded them, and placed them in her hand. She put them on the bedside table and put hers next to them, pausing with her fingers on the tabletop as she looked down at them side by side. “Oh… I like that,” she said softly.

“What? Tell me?” He was too busy looking at her, the blurry halo of her hair around her myopically-fuzzy features that resolved as she settled herself onto his lap.

“Our glasses together like that… it’s a visual metaphor I find myself quite taken with.”

“Well, I’m finding myself quite taken with you,” he said, and she beamed at him.

“I’d prefer to find myself taken _by_ you,” she said, and kissed him before that had a chance to set in.

***

Jonah would admit that he’d thought about kissing Donna before. He was only human, and she was very cute, and in his defense they’d had a couple of close calls on tour, moments where he was sure they’d end up smooching before something or someone (usually a bot) broke the mood. 

He did _not_ , however, anticipate the way she’d kiss him for real, under the influence of monster hormones, with her teeth on his lip and his gasp matched with a growl. When she let go of his lip, it was only so she could kiss him elsewhere, another startling infliction of teeth on the side of his neck. Jonah had to fight not to go boneless underneath her, unwilling to simply let himself be battered around like a hapless male jackalope. He was human, dammit, he had some sense of dignity, and his own preferences that may or may not have lined up with the way she was biting him— okay, they did, his preferences totally lined up with this, but he liked to be a little more reciprocal than just passively taking whatever he was offered.

“Oh,” Donna purred into the bend of his shoulder when Jonah laced his fingers through her riot of curls. “Yes, do that.” He tugged gently and she lifted her head to kiss him again, without the teeth this time, a fierce but tender smooch that left them both gazing nearsightedly into each other’s eyes. “You are _excellent_ company, Jonah.”

“Thank you,” he said, sliding his other hand underneath her lab coat and under her shirt to splay against the small of her back. “This is not what I thought would happen when you said you had an urgent task you needed my help with.”

“I rather think I’ll have more urgent tasks of this nature that will require your presence,” she laughed, shrugging off her lab coat and letting it fall. “After all, you’ve got— mm. Quite a reach. You’re exceptionally useful.”

“Exceptionally, huh? I haven’t even demonstrated most of my talents,” Jonah said, and Donna’s eyes lit up.

“If you’d like to demonstrate one of them… or some of them… I’m paying very close attention now,” she said.

***

“That sounds like permission,” Jonah said. Donna’s lips quirked up.

“Would you like to sign the consent forms now, or can I just verbally tell you that I’d like you to delight me in any manner you can think of?”

“That’ll do.” His fingers were still damnably clumsy when he went to unbutton her vest, and she laughed and knocked his hand away to undo her own buttons, not stopping until she’d shrugged off everything except her plain grey cotton bra. The look Jonah gave her made her feel more like it was lace and silk, like she was astonishing enough on her own to not need the decoration, and he buried his face between her breasts with a happy sigh.

“Oh!” she yelped at the scratch of his stubble against her skin. “Oh. That’s _interesting,_ ” she added when he mouthed at the curve of one breast, his cheek scuffing the other one in a sensation she wasn’t sure whether she enjoyed yet. He hummed happily as he pressed kisses everywhere her bra didn’t cover until he managed to unhook the offending article and free more of her skin to his attention. “ _Oh,_ ” she sighed, and dug both hands into his hair when he caught one of her nipples between his lips. 

Jonah was trying to tame himself, but the scent and taste of her skin was more dizzying than anything the jackalope had done to him, and he wanted nothing more than to taste more of her. Donna yelped when he lifted her from his lap and set her on the bed, and then gasped when he went to his knees in front of her. “Can I?” he asked, hands going to the fastening of her pants.

“ _Please_ ,” she said, and found herself quickly stripped to her skin, flushed pink from his attention and eager for more of it. He gently pressed her legs apart and bent his head to feast on her.

***

“Oh _my_ ,” Donna breathed, her hands twisting in her bedsheets for a moment before she twined them in Jonah’s hair instead, pulling him into her insistently. “Oh, Jonah…”

He answered not with words but with action, nose buried in her damp curls and his tongue pressing into her, big hands spread across her soft thighs to prevent her from clamping them shut around him. Every lash of his tongue drew a soft sound of pleasure from her that was almost like a hiccup, and his single-minded attention toward pleasing her meant that she sounded like she was in the middle of a fit of hiccups and giggles that was both very distracting and intensely cute, from his perspective.

“Oh, oh… _oh_!” Her hands tightened painfully in his hair and pulled him away, and he tried not to feel betrayed by being interrupted from a task he was enjoying so greatly— until she bent down to kiss him on the mouth hungrily.

***

“Talented,” Donna purred as she pulled back, licking her lips thoughtfully. Jonah’s head spun at her smirk, and she took him by the hands and pulled. “Here, come here, trade places with me—” She made short work of his jumpsuit before she pushed him down to sit where she’d been, and Jonah was too horny to feel awkward about the fact that he’d been left in nothing but mismatched socks before his attention was thoroughly diverted by Donna wrapping a hand around him and stroking firmly.

“I’m— um. Not prepared for this,” Jonah managed to stumble out, lashes fluttering, and Donna laughed.

“Don’t worry. The jackalope might need to be fertilized to stop her hormones raging, but I certainly don’t. As if any reasonable woman of science wouldn’t take her own precautions…” Whether that was an objectively sexy sentence was a matter of debate; Jonah thought it was ragingly hot from where he was sitting, which was underneath her when she perched herself astride his lap. “ _Preparation_ aside, are you _ready_?”

“Yes,” he said, and she gave him a gentle shove until he fell back, catching himself on his elbows and looking up at her wide-eyed. “Please,” he added, because he liked to be polite, and because she beamed at him when he said it.

“All right, then.” Jonah wasn’t sure how the jackalopes did it and he didn’t really want to know, but Donna was perfectly in control in this encounter and he hadn’t realized that would be so _good_ , not being responsible, just letting himself be swept up in her passion. She took him in with one steady shift of her hips, and Jonah gasped and fell the rest of the way back against the bed.

***

“ _Oh_ ,” Donna breathed.

“ _Ah_ ,” Jonah agreed. That weird tingly feeling that had been shivering through his body sharpened and focused wherever his skin pressed against hers: her legs around his, her hands splayed on his chest, their stomachs brushing as she melted against him. Her curly hair looked like an explosion around her head and felt like the gentlest tickle against his skin when she tucked her face into the bend of his neck. “Is this—”

“Yes!” He wrapped his hands around her hips and decided to take her blanket permission as if he’d gotten all his questions out, moving them for her until she tossed her head, sat up, and moved them herself, riding him like he was a horse that needed to be broken. “Oh, yes, yes!”

Jonah couldn’t remember ever being treated like this before in bed, and he didn’t mind in the least that she was the one to treat him this way. Everything was relative; at least she wasn’t treating him like he needed to be brought to heel in their outside of bed interactions. She treated him like he _mattered_ outside of this room… and he felt like he mattered here and now, too, like he’d been chosen, like even if the events of the day had sped up the timeline and twisted the dynamic, that he and Donna might have ended up here just like this anyways, simply because they chose each other to share this with.

***

“You’re so sweet,” Donna sighed as they both caught their breath, snuggling in the afterglow. She was curled up entirely on top of Jonah with room to spare, and his arms were wrapped snugly around her to hold her there. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Jonah echoed, a little dopey from the oxytocin that had swept the last of the jackalope pheromones out of his bloodstream. She lifted her head to blink at him.

“Yes. For implicating you in… all of this, today. Without properly warning you.”

“Oh. Consider yourself forgiven.” 

“No, you can’t just— that felt too easy! I can’t accept it!”

“You can’t accept my forgiveness?”

“No! I have to… I have to atone for my sins.”

“Dr. St. Phibes…” Jonah said, putting heavy emphasis on the _saint_ , “I’m not sure what part of getting me off the Satellite of Love, giving me something interesting to do, and then taking me back to your room to have your way with me requires atonement, but I’d say the last part of it atones for the rest of it if you feel like you’ve somehow wronged me, don’t you think?”

“Oh… I suppose that’s valid,” she said, and he offered her a lopsided smile.

“If you feel really guilty about it, you can always come up with more excuses to get me here that don’t involve monster puberty hormones. I promise I’ll still be interested if it’s not something to do with mating. As long as whatever you need me for involves the both of us, I’m willing.”

“Well…” Her gaze went slightly distant. “Rosebud is going to need a hutch to give birth in.”

“A jackalope hutch?” Jonah’s brow furrowed, trying to imagine a rabbit hutch built for something with a four foot rack of antlers. “I don’t suppose you have blueprints I could work from…”

“I’m a conservationist, not an architect,” Donna said, a little tartly. “You’re a gifted inventor… I have the utmost faith in your ability to accomplish whatever task I set you to.”

“Give me ten more minutes and you can set me to another task,” Jonah said with a laugh in his voice, and Donna giggled and let her head fall back to his chest.

“I think ten minutes should be long enough for me to come up with something interesting for you to do.”


End file.
